Clinton Calls For Action To Battle Economic Inequality

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is seen at the State Department… (Getty Images )

October 05, 2013|By CHRISTOPHER HOFFMAN, Special to The Courant, The Hartford Courant

NEW HAVEN — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mixed reminiscences of her Yale Law School days with a call to address growing economic inequality, especially as it affects children, in an address at the school Saturday afternoon.

"It was here that I developed a lifelong passion about children's welfare," Clinton said, as her husband, former President Bill Clinton, looked on. "If you want to know the moral and economic health of a community, look at the children."

Clinton, a former U. S. senator and first lady, received the Yale Law School Association Award of Merit. Yale Law School Dean Robert C. Post called it the most prestigious award given by the school.

The packed audience at Woolsey Hall gave Clinton, who graduated from Yale Law School in 1973, a standing ovation as she took the stage.

In his introductory remarks, Post told audience members that pundits were speculating that Clinton might "seek to add one last elusive line to her resume."

"I'm very glad to say that with this award we can prove them right," Post said, provoking a gale of laughter.

Taking the podium, Clinton recalled arriving at Yale Law School in a beat-up old car with a mattress tied to the top nearly 40 years ago.

"I'm so grateful that there was no Internet or phone cameras in those days," she said.

Clinton described seeing her future husband and fellow law student Bill for the first time. After eyeing each other for some time, she said she approached him at the library. Since they kept looking at each other, they ought to know each other's names, she recalled saying.

"Bill tells a better story: 'I totally forgot my name,'" she said, mimicking the former president's Southern drawl. "But he recovered. We had a conversation that started that day and continues to this one."

Turning more serious, Clinton talked of growing income inequality and how it affects children. Child poverty rates show the price of growing income disparity in the United States. New Haven's child poverty rate, for example, is 38 percent, and Hartford's is more than 50 percent, she said.

"Just think about that," she said. "Connecticut is one of our wealthiest states and more than half the children in its capital live in poverty."

As more parents work longer, they have less time to read and interact with their children. That leaves kids with smaller vocabularies when they come to school, putting them at a disadvantage, she said. This so-called "word gap" did not exist several generations ago, and inequality is to blame, she said.

Clinton said she was starting an initiative called Too Small to Fail to address childhood poverty and the "word gap."

"We are seeing a cycle of economic pressures and income inequality that will make it harder and harder as the years go by for millions of our children to succeed in school and in life," she said. "Those children are telling us in their own way what we need to do."

It was at Yale Law School that Clinton said she acquired her longtime interest in improving the lives of children, first working with poor migrant farm workers in Mississippi and later on child abuse issues at Yale-New Haven Hospital and at the Yale Child Center.

Clinton said she concluded childhood poverty was an indicator of larger problems in a society.

"Kids were the canaries in the proverbial coal mines," she said.

Clinton recalled the tumult and change at Yale Law School during her time there, including the 1970 Black Panther trial and controversy over the Vietnam War.

"The times themselves left indelible memories," she said. "But it was my professors and my classmates who most influenced and shaped the kind of lawyer I became and the choices I made."